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Thursday, May 13, 2010

Overlords RFC, Part Four

Right around this time, I had a chat with Mommy.

"I'd like to go back to England", she said. "I need to re-connect with my family and friends. That will help me on my journey of healing" (healing after leaving Mormonism, that is).

Not to go into too much detail, but no one had been longing as desperately for Mommy to complete her "journey of healing" more than I had over the past few years, so in the moment she said it, I was on board. She asked me to buy the tickets and schedule the trip for her, which I did: three weeks in July (2008), back to England. I would stay at home with the kids. As usual, I felt very hopeful - in retrospect, naively so - that this trip would really help her achieve peace, etc.

We were all sad to see Mommy go, although I also was relishing having a fun, laidback three weeks with all eight kids. Barbecues, the beach, swimming, biking...I thought we'd be able to have a blast. And then I had another idea. I called up my brother, Spoiler, who was still in White Rock (on the mainland, a suburb of Vancouver).

"Tracy's gone for three weeks. Why don't you come over?", I said.

"I have no money", he said.

"I have landscaping I have to complete. You can help me, and I can just pay you".

"Done", he said.

The next day, my cell phone rang. It was Spoiler.

"Brudder, it's me. I'm just pulling in to the ferry terminal. My friend gave me a ride on his motorbike".

I wondered why he was calling me if he was still riding on the back of a motorcycle. Didn't you need to hold on with both hands? In any case, it sounded like they were just stopping the motorcycle, and he was trying to get off.

"I'll be on the 3, can you pick me-OWWWWW!!!!", he suddenly shouted. "YOUR BIKE JUST BURNED MY LEG! LOOK AT MY LEG!".

In the background, I could hear his friend was saying, "Oh, you gotta be careful around the-"

"YOUR BIKE JUST BURNED MY LEG! NOW I'M GOING TO HAVE A SCAR! ALL SUMMER! A GIANT SCAR FOR SUMMER! LOOK AT MY LEG! WHY DON'T YOU WATCH IT WITH YOUR STUPID BIKE, MAN?! Brudder, this guy's pipe here just totally burned my leg. YEAH THANKS A LOT MAN. NOW MY LEG IS BURNT!....YEAH WHATEVER....YEAH....YEAH, SEE YA LATER!"

Listening in, I couldn't quite grasp how it would have been his friend's fault (who after all, I assumed had given him a ride all the way from White Rock to the Tswawwassen ferry terminal) that Spoiler, who was wearing shorts, had burned his leg on the pipe while dismounting.

In any case, the kids and I picked Spoiler up a couple of hours later on the Vancouver Island side...and thus began a legendary three weeks of hilarity.

4 comments:

Ahhh…the motorcycle muffler burn, I know it well. I got a bad motorcycle burn on my leg when I was about 13. I had accepted a ride home from school from a couple of the neighborhood boys who happened to see me as they were riding around on a motorcycle.

There were several problems with this scenario: The first and most glaring problem was that there were ALREADY two guys on this motorcycle, so picking up a third person would not seem possible or prudent, but you know teenagers. The second problem was that neither boy was old enough to legally drive a motorcycle nor did they have a driver’s license. Third, I was a 13 year old girl accepting a ride from two 15 year old boys on a motorcycle, and of course none of us were wearing a helmet. This is the kind of thing your parents are cautioning against when they tell you to be careful. These are the memories that keep me up at night now that I’m the parent of a teenager.

Anyway, of course I jumped on that motorcycle. Two boys on a motorcycle, what girl would turn that down? Answer: A smart girl. But I was obviously not using my brain at the time. The boys had me sit in between them and I had a lovely two minute ride home from school. But when I went to get off the motorcycle I slid to the side with one foot on the ground and I would have normally swung my other leg over the back of the motorcycle, but since there was a guy behind me I just stood there stuck for a few seconds until the boys realized my predicament and the boy on the back got off so I could get my other leg off the bike. I didn’t realize that this whole time my leg that was on the ground was being burned by the muffler since I was wearing shorts at the time. It wasn’t until I walked into my house that I realized my leg was burned. I think the muffler was so hot that I didn’t register the burning at the time. Anyway, my skin was all melted and gooey and it has left a bit of a scar there. It’s a reminder of younger, stupider days.